HorseTraining for Dummies

My mustang has been bolting out from under me for the last year. After each disaster, I spend a couple of months in ground work and try riding him again, but every time, he gets panicky and off I go. I determined that it wasn't a backpain issue because he does the same thing with anything over his back. I tied empty cardboard boxes to his surcingle and got the same bolty reaction. Instead of riding him myself and getting hurt (again), I decided to enlist some help.

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Judy came from the Prank Place. She is anatomically incorrect but reportedly a delightful home companion made in China. Only a small woman, she is one of the best horsewomen we have ever seen. She makes it seem like everything the mustang does is the mustang's own idea. She cost $19.95 plus shipping and handling.	We outfitted her in military style pants. The boots were duct taped at the laces and then the boot tops duct taped to her legs. The laces were run through a hole in the knees and secured around the legs. The pants were secured with and over the shoulder duct tape strap and safety pinned to the shirt. Bungies were run through the belt loops, then a carabiner was used to attach each one to the saddle. Her legs were tied to the stirrup leathers above her knees with the boot laces and the drawstrings at the bottom of the pant legs were tied to the stirrups.	The first day, we just took Judy into the roundpen and let her hang out with us. We rubbed her on the mustang then just draped her across the saddle like a dead person. We tied her on each side so he couldn't shake her loose. He was a bit panicky, just like he is when I ride him, but she hung tight. Second day, we put him in the confines of a stall to get her in the saddle. It was very good that we had done a dress rehersal without the horse so we knew just where to clip quickly. Again he acted just like I was on him and bolted around the stall.
After driving him around the stall we took him out to the biggest paddock and turned him loose. He was stuck for a few minutes just tensed up waiting for Judy to ask him for something.	Judy didn't ask, so I started asking him to "walk-on", the same command that I use when I want him to go in the round pen. He minced around for a few minutes before he bolted away.	He bolted three times, then settled down to just walking around the edges of the paddock
Video 1: 629kb 2 second clip of bolting horse, notice me telling him not to come into my space. He gets close to me when he is frightened	Video 2: 1016kb 2 second clip of bolting horse stopping at fence, look how Judy sits that stop!	In the end, the mustang walked calmly around the paddock twice each way. We started out of the paddock gate, where he bolted back to the barn, so I led him back to the paddock gate and we tried it again, with the leadrope draped over his neck so if he wanted to bolt, he could. Sensing my resolve to do it over and over until he could walk calmly, the second time he just walked beside me like a good ol' saddle horse. We've been busy getting up our hay and waiting for thunderstorms to roll over the canyon. As soon as we get a chance Judy will ride again.

I would recommend this procedure to anyone with a horse who is not quite safe to be riding. I plan to let Judy take 10 rides before we consider whether it is safe for me to try to ride again.

Judy Rides Again: 2nd Ride

We saddled up and headed to the roundpen. He didn't mind me carrying Judy very much this time and he let me lay her across the saddle right away, but he shied away when I went to put her leg over the saddle. I had purposely tied up the leadrope so he could have to work the round pen a couple of times. Twice around each way and he was ready to let me put Judy in the saddle. He stood nicely while I hooked her carabiners to the saddle. Then I asked him to put his head down. No problem on the left side, but he wouldn't yeild to my request when I stood on the right side. Time to round pen again for a few laps. He got excited but he never really bolted in the pen. Then he yeilded to my request for head down.

He was behaving very well in the roundpen but it didn't really offer much opportunity for bad behavior so I opened the gate to let him into the paddock where he lives. He was calm inside the roundpen but I could tell that going through that gate was an opportunity to bolt in his mind. He tensed up as I gently pulled the lead from inside the paddock and then he rocketed through the gate and across the paddock.

It was the first time I ever got to really see why he gets me off everytime. He has this way of bolting while he changes leads radically, tossing the rider from side to side. Judy sat it out like a champ.

I caught him and walked back to the round pen gate. Again, I tied the lead up and asked him to come through the gate. Again he looked like I must really be stupid to give him the chance to bolt again. He did, but without nearly the force and effort. Again I caught him up and returned to inside the roundpen. We did this four times and on the last one, he casually walked out of the gate and over to his paddock mates. I unbuckled the cinch and stripped the rider and saddle from his back and removed his halter and went off in search of a horse snack. A job well done and he was pleased with the nice scratching he got on all of his most itchy places.

Regression: 3nd Ride

The event started out well enough although Judy wasn't quite to optimal inflation. I tied JD to a rail infront of the tackroom and saddled up. He was doing okay when I brough Judy out and slipped her up into the saddle. Then, the drafthorse yearling, Paisley, reached over the fence and took ahold of Judy's shirtsleeve. JD panicked and the rope on the rail kept him from escaping what he saw as a bad situation. Judy was dangling on his side. She might have been damaged in the process, but for his mental state it would have helped to just run out.

After that, he couldn't settle down. I tried letting him loose in the paddock and then spent the next two hours trying to catch him without him bolting away. Finally, I got a long thick rope and clipped it to his halter when he let me get close. Then I continued to ask him to move around the pen. When he was willing to stop for a minute on his own volition, I tied the end of the rope to the base of a fence post. He got nervous and moved away, but just as he came to the end of the rope I asked for a "whoa". I took the rope end in my hands and asked him to start going around me (lounging, which he has done a lot). He did not relax but complied without tearing off. I took him out of the paddock and moved him to the round corral. He would almost join up, but then look away and bolt around the corral. I started walking up to him and touching Judy and the saddle, then walking away.

I took the halter off of him, which paradoxically helped steady him. He didn't bolt again after that. I started unclipping Judy, then pulled her off. I pulled the saddle off and he started following me closely, visibly relieved. He was hot and damp where the saddle had been, so I kept him in the roundpen until the sweat had dried.

I was very disappointed, but upon reflection, I can see where I went wrong. It wouldn't have happened if I had roundpenned him in the paddock from horseback or if I had kept him in hand. Judy is now a hated object so we have to try to get her on and go graze the lawn or something pleasant and simple.

Out of Air

Judy started splitting along the seam on the side of her face and couldn't hold air. JD and I took the day off to just do some pleasant things like graze on the lawn and practice the TTEAM TOUCH stuff. Later, I undressed Judy for surgery and held her in the horsetrough to find the leak. Hmmm. My dad recommended Gorilla Glue, so I tried it. Don't waste your time even taking the cap off... it doesn't work on vinyl. I tried ironing the seam to melt them back together. It partially worked. Then I got out the superglue. Here is the trick... get the superglue inside the hole. Clean everything off on the outside, then squeeze it together for a minute or two. Your fingers are going to stick to the plastic, but remove them carefully or better yet, put a tiny piece of plastic between your flesh and the pinched vinyl. That side of her face no longer looks quite so fresh and young. Life is like that.

Day 5: Under control.

In martial arts you have "forms", but in horsetraining, what is the name for a set of motions? There is one of these horse forms that I have seen a couple of trainers doing, around here we call it "Brad Cameroning" because Brad spends half a video just talking about the subtleties of this form. Frank Bell does it as the "Ballet on the Ground". Basically its three steps: 1)driving the equine into a circle; 2) doing a turn on the forehand (or alternately a one-rein stop); and then 3) driving back out with a turn on the haunches. Day five was all about this Dance.

JD has done this a lot, there was nothing new about it. We did it in three phases. Pre-saddling; saddled; and with-rider. The first two sets were quite ho-hum, then with Judy on board things unraveled a bit. He sets his neck and didn't want to bend it during step two. It didn't matter, the important thing was to keep it flowing. No bolting. He put his head down on request and it was enough.

Day 6: Bending

Judy has new duds on: pull-on boots that are safety pinned to her pants. Much better way to keep those boots from dangling!

Having learned our lesson about keeping things cool and calm, there is no more just letting him go in the paddock to get out the buck. Today we worked on the remedy to the bending problems from Day 5. We did the Dance before we saddled up and we just spent some bonding time working on TTEAM TTOUCH stuff like rubbing his gums and pulling his ears. He likes TTOUCH. After we saddled, I tied on the driving lines and drove him around the pen. This particular pen is about 30x100ft so there is room to practice going straight, the hardest thing for him as it means he can't see me behind him. Everything was calm as we worked back and forth across the length of the pen. I ask him to bend his nose around toward me at his side. He has done it a zillion times before but he had to be reminded of what I wanted by letting the bar down and rewarding him for even a tiny "try". With his head bent around, I would reach up and do little TTOUCHES on his neck as a reward. Bending to the left is not nearly as hard for him as bending to the right, but he was doing it well enough when I stopped and fetched Judy.

She slipped right into the saddle with no fuss.I walked JD up and back the length of the corral until he was calm. Then I asked him to bend his head around. Not possible! He was quite willing to disengage his hips and swing them around but putting his face towards Judy was entirely too challenging. It took almost a half hour to get his him to bend left and another 45 minutes to bend to the right. As long as he wasn't giving me at least a tiny try, I kept my hand around his nose, slightly pulling. The instant he would bend even the tiniest amount, I let his nose go and gave him a rub. He finally did both sides and I unsaddled on that positive note. Once Judy was out of the corral, I asked him to bend again for me. He just turned his nose around and looked right at me like he knew what I wanted exactly.

Day 7: Resistance

I spent a few minutes cutting up a bunch of carrot slivers and stuffed them in my pocket. My plan was just a bit of head lowering to retreive carrot sticks from near his front hooves. He did it a few times and then quit looking for the carrot. I had to put the carrot by his nose before he would follow it down to the ground. He just didn't want to play that game. I've actually done this with him before but it's been about a year.

My quest for the day was to make things more interesting for him by getting out of the corral and going for a walk. Criteria was that he had to be willing to put his head down at my suggestion. He was not very cooperative right from the beginning.

He got a bit figety as I put Judy into the saddle. Now his head was definitely not going to go to the ground. Was he scared or just stubborn? How can you tell? We walked the length of the pen a dozen times. Still no willingness to put his head down when I asked. We wet out to the roundpen and met with stubborn resistence. I made him go to work and he finally gave a half-hearted try, but I was ready to accept that because I really didn't want to fight it out.

Once out of the pen, I put a chain through his halter to keep the situation under control incase he tried to bolt and took him for a walk down to the cottonwoods along the river. It's a drought and the grass is sparse, but I found a few patches and gave him the headdown request. We do this pretty frequently. He is always pretty wary to start with, but pretty soon the grass has his attention. This time, though, he wasn't interested in eating grass even when I picked it and held it to his lips.

It wasn't the nice little outing I had hoped for and I got the distinct feeling that he was being resentful more than fearful. Something about asking him to reach for those carrots had set him off.

Ron tells me that I need to just use a firmer hand with him and give him something definite to do. I decided to work on the head down situation so we went back to the roundpen. I left him and Judy standing there while I drug over a large tire. I tied it onto the leadrope just below the halter ring. Ron did this to him to work on head lowering a long time ago and I resorted to it once when the best he would do is bob his head down and then jerk it back up. It reminds him that resistence is futile. This time, he immediately put his head down and held his nose next to the tire until I approached and then the head had to spring back up, full weight of the tire hanging from his chin. I tried talking to him, petting him, being really soft. His head just stayed up for the longest time. I just waited quietly. After about 20 minutes his head came down for a couple of moments, then when I moved, up it sprang again. Ten minutes this time until he released it. Up again - down again. All in all I spent a couple of hours with a horse tied to a tire by his head and a dummy strapped to his saddle. He finally decided resistence was futile and down went his head. I petted him and when he just stood there, I untied the lead. I quietly removed Judy and asked him to put his head down again. Down it went and he rubbed his lip in the sand. We walked back to his pen and stopped three times to retest the head down concept, each time he polished the ground with his muzzle.

Today should have been Day 8, but I had to go to town and get supplies. The drive gave me a lot of time to think about the problem. JD is either: 1)partially mentally ill prone to unpredictable anxiety attacks that coincide with asking him to do something he doesn't like; 2) falsely compliant part of the time; or 3) only truely compliant at rare moments. We have been working head down for over a year and we still have to start at ground zero every so often. He is going to be too old to ride before I convince him that letting me ride him is the best thing that ever happened.

One of the best ideas I have now is to put a bucket with grain and the stuff my bad brother calls "Horse Crack" (Triple Crown Senior horsefeed) out in the wild. He might be able to turn his head up to dessicated grass, but not to "Horse Crack". We will just walk out to the wild and find the bucket. We'll do it it four or five times and see if he has a new idea about going out on the trail with saddle and "rider".

The other good idea has to wait until there is another person around in case something goes wrong. That idea is to pony JD out with Chester the mule, who turns out to be a pretty good pony mule. I don't want to try it with just my hubby here because he just had a triple bypass so he couldn't pick me up or drive me to the hospital if I fell off and got hurt. He would kill himself trying though. My brother will be back from vacation in a week or so and meanwhile we will resort to "horse crack". Dumb blonds and drugs.... what else could a mustang want?

Day 8: Irresistable Stuff.

I tucked the feed bucket under a sage brush across the road before I went to catch JD. He could smell it on my hands, perhaps. We went for a short walk around the yard and then bee-lined it to the waiting bucket. Irresistable for sure. He put his head down and chowed down on the scant cup of Triple Crown. We returned home and the paddock without incident.

Day 9: Walk in the Park.

Maggie was visiting and she likes to walk so we saddled the mustang, strapped on the rider and headed down to the hinterlands. There was a green saltgrass marsh that I invited JD to sample. At first putting his head down was questionable, but again greed gave in. We walked back without incident. Maggie was thinking that this seems like a pretty nice horse.

Interlude: Driving.

I want to work up to driving him with the inflatable horsewoman on board. We've worked on driving extensively in the past, the last long episode being in April. At that point I drove JD in the round pen for a week. No problem. I drove him in the paddock for a week. No problem. I drove him down the road to the pond. He got to where he had blown up once before and he remembered it and bolted away from me. He wasn't scared. He just wanted to go back to the corral and hang out. You would say... oh but he was scared! I would say, oh but he knew he could take control! We follwed up by driving in the paddock where I could maintain control.

Yesterday, I got to the point that the inflatable horsewoman wasn't going to be able to help with. So we rigged up for some driving. I didn't bother with the round corral or the paddock, we just went right into the back yard, which is a very familiar place for my equines as they hang out there when they are free. I ran the driving reins through the snaffle bit rings and tied them off to the saddle cinch. Then we started driving around the yard. No problem for about the first 5 minutes. Then we went around one of my little fenced-in chili gardens and down went his haunches and he launched away....except for those pesky draw reins. I pulled on one of them and around went his head. Suddenly he was twirling nose to saddle. I had to let go of the reins, but they wrapped around him for a perfect one-rein stop. I got my lines back and we continued on. He tried to bolt 5 times, mostly as I was thinking he was done and we could head back to the tack shed. Then we'd have to drive around the yard again. Finally a perfectly calm loop and we headed home. I was suprised how calm he was when I went to un-rig him. He just let out a big ol' sigh, like he was content and he seemed gregarious with me in his corral, not depressed and isolating like he gets sometimes.

I decided to do the draw reins on the basis of two trainers writings. One was Meredith Hodges and the other was Ed Connell, both who I totally respect. I have noticed a total absence of discussion of how to cure bolting amonst the natural horsemanship crowd except head lowering. A year of head lowering exercises hadn't helped much.